


Young Master

by theweddingofthefoxes



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Blowjobs, Jealousy, M/M, a lot of implied snoke in the brain, jealous!hux, knights of ren backstory, mostly canon but probably not completely, technically sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 03:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14151273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theweddingofthefoxes/pseuds/theweddingofthefoxes
Summary: Hux has always felt underlying jealousy of the Knights of Ren. When he falls ill, he learns where they came from, and finds that there is more to the story -- and less to be jealous of -- than he expected.





	Young Master

Envy is a color that looks bad on anyone, but the harder Hux tries to deny it, the more it seems to seep through. It is an itchy, hungry feeling that resists every attempt to satisfy it; Hux isn’t even sure what could. Not the logical side of his brain that argues, just as stubborn, that he is Ren’s partner, and no one else. Not the way Ren smiles into his mouth when Hux insists on a kiss, or the way Ren is always _game_ when Hux wants to push and prod, to tie and torment, to use Ren in any way he wants. Ren is not simply tolerant, he wants to crank the dial up, add his own suggestions. Ren wants to be an active participant in his own debasement, and it’s an arrangement that suits them both so well.

And it would be just like Hux to fuck the entire thing up because he doesn’t know how to be happy.

 _Ingrate_ , snarls the mean voice that lives in Hux’s head, the one that sounds just like his own. 

What could Hux possibly be jealous for?

_It’s those shadows of his, always lurking about._

The six knights that are like hounds at Ren’s heels. Faithful, silent, black, looming, so often present -- appearing out of nowhere as if to simply spite Hux, who moves nowhere quietly, who does not sneak. As if to remind Hux that they will be going nowhere. 

Has Ren heard Hux’s inward shouting, the kind of shouting that ruins your throat when you’re through? Has he heard the stream of go-away-go-away-go-away in Hux’s heart when one or two or all six of the knights command Ren’s attention, no matter how often Ren makes it clear that it is he who commands them?

If Ren knows about this particular internal monologue, he doesn’t address it until Hux falls ill. 

For someone who ventures off the ship so rarely, Hux has an immune system of durasteel, and those occasional outbreaks that touch nearly everyone else seem to respect his rank and leave him alone. But this time, it seems a general and a trooper stand on equal footing, and Hux is forced to retreat to his quarters. Quarantine is the excuse, a more dignified way of saying ‘delirious and headachey and miserable’, and command is handed over for the meantime. Ren is away, on some vaguely-explained training with his shadows. 

This is no different than being ill as a cadet, Hux tells himself, hating how alone he feels as his fever climbs to dizzying heights and he begins to see things he knows that aren’t there. People he knows for a fact are not in this room. Did he really think that Ren would _dote_ on him? Imbecile. Whatever he’s doing, it’s more important than watching Hux suffer. The droid assigned to his care chirps in alarm once it takes his temperature and he tries to smack it away, but he is so weak that his shove has all the power of a tossed wet washcloth. “Get me fluids,” he tells it, and then passes out before he gets the opportunity to drink them.

He dreams of seven shadows that bunch and blob together into one, and when he opens his eyes he still sees them, combining and parting against the walls, on the ceiling. His throat is too dry to scream, and it is easier to just close his eyes again, feel the insides of his eyelids pulse with misery, and count himself down to sleep. He doesn’t have to open his eyes. He does not.

When he wakes again, Ren is there, and it’s not a dream.

“Heard you almost died,” Ren tells him, like it’s a challenge. Like a joke is just around the corner. It’s not, though, and instead Ren kneels by his bedside, his expression strange and reserved, maybe even relieved.

“Not yet.” 

“Mm,” Ren answers. 

“How long have I been here?”

“How should I know? I’ve been back for thirty minutes. When you weren’t there to bite my head off the moment I stepped off the shuttle, I knew I should come straight here.”

Hux waits a long time before responding. 

“Did you, now.”

Flat. Unquestioning. 

“That’s right.”

Ren puts a hand to Hux’s sticky-hot cheek, his dark eyes boring straight through Hux’s head. 

“You look awful.”

He knows Hux is too vain to let that go without comment.

“I’ve been dying. Isn’t that reason enough to look like shit?”

Ren smiles. 

“You’re not dying.”

That’s beside the point, really.

“Where have you been?” Hux demands, his voice warped and foreign, like a ghost has slipped into his body, is trying to push the words out but isn’t sure how. 

“Away.”

“With them.”

“With them,” Ren agrees, and Hux groans, his heart finally unloading the jealousy, which hurts so much, hurts like a physical wound. Hux has never been stabbed, though it’s a close thing, but this, this has to be what it feels like. “I needed you here.”

“You never told me you were ill,” Ren murmurs. 

“You should have known, Ren. You, more than anyone.”

“You weren’t ill when I left.”

“You should have come _back_ ,” Hux insists, knowing he sounds like a child. It is too hard to keep talking, so instead he adds, mentally. _You should have heard me crying out in the darkness._

“I did come back.” From Ren, it sounds both annoyed and fond, like he can’t believe Hux doesn’t just know this. “You were the first thing I came back for.”

“There’s something I want to know.”

“So ask.” Ren shifts, his knees clearly hurting from kneeling so long on the cold solid floor. “I’ll answer as well as I can.”

“Why are _they_ so important?”

Ren strokes Hux’s cheek with his thumb, and it’s so very tender, even though Ren’s eyes look so strange and cruel and pretty. 

“Armitage. I want you to understand this.”

“I want to understand too.” Hux is no stranger to having power over others, even from a young age, but he’s never been so personally invested in them the way Ren is. They are simply tools for him to use, and while it matters a great deal that they have loyalty to him, he is not nearly as interested in showing them loyalty -- personal, loving, ferocious loyalty -- in return. He doesn’t understand the closeness that Ren shows his knights. Perhaps he never will, but that won’t stop Ren from trying.

“Close your eyes.”

When Hux obliges, the feverish sensation from before comes back, hot and rushing, leaving his body weak and immobile -- not stiff or trapped, but just too powerless to move, he cannot even move his lips to speaks -- and Ren shows him.

* * *

It is more frightening when it is over. 

In the moment, it is easy to act, to simply let instinct take him, and take him, and take him. Ben has burned up all of his fuel, though, both internally and in reality, and now he stands at the bottom of the hill, the far faint light of the fires at his back. Too far to feel the heat. 

He feels frightened, now, but he has to cloak it. If Luke is still alive -- and for all the scouring that Ben has done of the temple, for the immensity of what he’s just done and how much he’s destroyed, he pretty sure Luke could still be alive -- he’ll sense it, and he is _never_ going to let Luke see him afraid again, that was the last time. He feels something huge and dark move through him, guarding him, preventing his fear from slipping out. Whatever has just shielded him is the only thing in the entire galaxy to know what he really feels. That, and him. 

The others make their way down the hill, and Ben knows they’re the right ones.

There are so very few of those, but they’re the right ones. 

“We have to keep going,” Ben says, when he knows they’re all within earshot. “We’ll keep moving.”

It’s quiet for a long moment. Nobody wants to question him, but they’re all afraid too, he can hear the murmur of their frightened hearts sure as the distant crackling of the fire he started. He’s going to have to lead them out of their fear and weakness, Ben decides. They didn’t learn shit here at the temple. He’s going to have to do this himself. He can teach, can’t he? He can do better--

“Where are we going?” one of them wants to know.

The answer comes from Ben’s mouth without him even needing to think about it. A sort of divine inspiration. Reassurance that he has done what he ought to, no matter how hard his heart is beating. 

“We’ll continue into the woods and conduct a meditation there. We’ll be heard. We’ll be rescued.”

Nobody asks by whom.

The next question is from the youngest of his new followers -- they are all younger than he is, but she has only just turned thirteen. “How did you get away from him? From Master Skyw--from him?”

As if the Skywalker name would enrage Ben, she swallows it back, but it doesn’t, because Ben has already decided he is no part of that blood. He thinks of the way that mothers tell little children stories about where babies come from, imaginary creatures hiding them in gardens under vegetable sprouts. Ben is no relation of Luke’s ( _no true blood kin would try to murder his own_ ). Ben was found in a patch of poison weeds. 

“It wasn’t easy,” Ben starts. 

They murmur.

“Mostly anybody he wants dead, they die,” one of the other students offers. 

“The ones coming for us,” Ben answers, not breaking stride. “They protected me.” All seven of them consider this as they tramp into the forest, singed and bloody and small, stars, they are so young. “They protected all of us.”

Not the others. 

Ben resists a shiver as they follow him into the heart of these woods, a place that none of them have ever been. _They will die for you now. Now that they know they are special, that your protection has made them special. There is nothing they won’t do for you. Reward their trust._

Sometimes Ben does not know if these ideas are his own, or if he is -- inspired. 

They reach a clearing after maybe thirty minutes of walking. A patch where no trees grow, perfect for stopping and sitting. Jedi in training should not be tired so quickly, but they are all tired, the adrenaline has given out and they are young and they want guidance from their savior. As they sit in front of him, Ben clears his throat, but only makes it more hoarse when he tries to speak. He tries again. 

“I am going to make you a promise right now. We’re safe now. We’re going to be rescued.”

He realizes, as he speaks, what these six have in common. They are all orphans, refugees, alone in this galaxy. They have no families, sometimes no planets, to return to. Luke had been their last hope to make a place for themselves in the universe, but he had betrayed them and Ben had rescued them. 

_Reward their trust_.

Ben is the only one of them that has a home to go back to and he would rather die.

“Do you believe me?”

They nod, watching his every move, hooked on his every word. 

_Command them_

“When we’re rescued, I’ll keep you close, all right? I’ll keep you safe. And you’ll do the same for each other, and for me. Luke is still out there -- who knows what he’ll want to do to me. He’ll want to finish the job.” Ben’s voice rises, louder, higher, wavering but not breaking. The eyes of the other students look full, like they’re about to cry. One of them is still nodding. “It won’t happen. We’ll keep each other safe.”

“Ben?” a student volunteers. “You must be more powerful than him. Or will be. That’s why he tried.”

Ben swallows. “It would make a lot of sense, wouldn’t it?”

“And your protectors….”

“ _We_ can be your protectors,” the youngest one says, with sudden vehemence. She backs down right away, intimidated by her own daring, adding. “Well. If we learn more.”

“You already know how to survive. That’s valuable. I’m not going to forget -- who came with me. Who escaped from him with me.” 

“We owe you our lives, Ben,” another one says. “If you hadn’t…”

“I did what I could. What I had to.”

He believes this, too.

“What can we do?” someone else wants to know. “To help you.”

Ben sits at last, still facing them. “Help me call out, for now. And we’ll go from there.”

It is easy to feel the power of their concentration, it can be physically felt, like wind, like warmth in the air. It feels like there are whispers in the air, though no one is speaking, and Hux cannot place the voices, cannot identify who is speaking to whom.

_you are safe you are here we are coming will die for you will live for you will you give yourself all it will take you are safe everything you have_

The energy builds slowly, but surely, the way the sun comes up. The faintest traces of something appearing in the darkness, more and more, until there is something so bright it is blinding -- it isn’t a metaphor anymore, now it’s a shuttle that has begun to lower in the wide clearing, and Ben scrambles to his feet protectively while the others freeze. He has never had siblings before, but suddenly these are his blood, his very own little brothers and sisters, and he has won their hearts, he won’t betray their trust so fast --

And the voice the Ben knows so well calls from the open entryway. The voice Hux knows so well.

“You’re safe now, Ben.”

* * *

Hux thinks the story will end there, but there is another scene to see.

The six students have gathered back around Ben once more in what Hux recognizes as Snoke’s throne room, clearly this is some time later. They do not look much older, physically, but they are composed and clean and confident now, not like hunted little creatures anymore. They are not really adults but they look polished, mature. They look as if someone has spent a very long time telling them their destiny is glorious, and they believe it, they do. They are armored all the same, all in black, and they seem eager to hear what Ben has to say. 

Ben has changed too, from the last memory to this one. His hair is a little longer, and the padawan’s braid is gone, probably long gone. He too wears all black. There is the skeleton of the lightsaber that Hux is familiar with in his hand as the others gather around him.

“You’ve earned what you are about to receive,” Ben says, his voice oddly serene. His followers do not fidget, but their eyes flick towards one another with excitement. “There is no greater honor than this. Knighthood.” He moves closer, as if he is going to inspect them all the way Hux does with his own troops. Instead, he looks almost like he’s about to give each of them a personal message, but he never speaks. Whatever he tells them, through the Force or through a look, Hux does not know. “No one else could have been given the honor of defending the protege of the Supreme Leader,” Ben goes on. “But you did it before you even knew what I was. Who I really was, who I was really meant to be. And that’s why you’re so deserving.”

There is something about this speech that’s a little frightening, a little intoxicating, a little heart-melting. Hux does not know if he wants to hear more or less of this. There is, he can see, a genuine love here. What type of love it is is less clear. The knights are his siblings, his possessions, his last link to his old life. And they love him too. They would die for him, but they have never had to. Their master has kept them safe from harm.

Hux would have expected that Ben’s transformation into the entity that he knows happened the moment he obliterated the Jedi temple. But no, that was still Ben, and it is not until this moment, when he steps away from his knights, knowing they have been permanently trained and altered for his use and that they’re thankful for it, that he left Ben behind.

Kylo Ren has nothing more to say to them for the moment, and he leaves, and they follow.

* * *

The fever ebbs away over the next day. The blobbing shapes don’t show up again. Hux rests, as much as he can stand, and works as much as he can manage. Is a balance possible? Hux will never get the hang of such things. But at least he’s getting measurably better. 

Ren never goes far. He sleeps in Hux’s bed once the housekeeping droids change all the linens. When Hux indicates he wouldn’t mind a blowjob now that he’s finally not contagious or miserable, he makes himself useful, makes Hux feel good for the first time in days. When Hux can’t sleep, Ren doesn’t either, and he lets Hux talk himself out about everything that’s been keeping him awake. Nothing that Ren actually cares about, he’s probably not even really listening, but Hux feels strangely spoiled feeling Ren’s fingers make steady lines up and down his back as he bitches, and bitches, and bitches.

He’s there. He will leave, every now and then, but not for the reasons that Hux is so afraid of.

When Hux is well enough to resume his duties, he notices one of the Knights of Ren lurking around half a room behind Ren, nothing out of the ordinary. But the stab of jealousy that Hux is so used to refuses to come. Instead of grinding his teeth down and turning his gaze away, Hux holds what he imagines is the eyeline of whoever is behind that mask, and approaches with his usual clattering confidence. 

The knight does not move. Perhaps this person has been expecting some kind of confrontation. They must know, by now, how Hux feels about their master. 

“You,” Hux says, with no preamble.

There is no answer. Hux has never heard any of them speak, except in Ren’s memory. The knight cocks their head, waiting.

Hux has very little to say, and he wastes no time saying it. 

“Thank you.”

Still no reply. That’s all either of them need out of this encounter. Hux continues to make his way down the corridor, for there’s still so much to do, so much to catch up on, and the day cycle is short.

**Author's Note:**

> WOW a new fic! I am definitely playing fast and loose with the happenings at the Jedi Temple, and with whatever Knights of Ren lore we do know. Thanks for reading, my lovelies!


End file.
